Six ideas for working with your worship team outside of Sunday mornings

Now your worship team is gathered, what are you going to do with them?

In the last entry we looked at our pastoral responsibility for our teams, and why it is so helpful to gather all the worship musicians together regularly. Here are some ideas that we have found to be really beneficial for our team building sessions.

1. Make space for worship and prayer whenever you can.

I wanted to start with this, as it is so important. We don’t dictate how our worship leaders should run their practises, and those evenings can often be completely taken up learning new songs and working on arrangements – all things that are extremely important. But it means we can often miss out on praying and worshipping as a group – and there is something so edifying about doing that together as a body of people. Interestingly, having started it with the team as a whole, individual worship leaders have actively tried to make space for simply worshipping and praying in their practises too and have noticed what a difference it makes. Whenever we finish early in a practise, we now try and worship then pray for one another – we had a really powerful time recently when our team prayed for me (who was worship leading that week), my husband (who was preaching) and our kids’ protection. It was a powerful, prophetic time which I truly believe kept us safe during the following few days’ attacks of the enemy (who obviously didn’t like the fact that as a couple we were involved in both main parts of the Sunday service)!

2. Make a plan of what you want to do in your worship team evenings.

We found when we weren’t following a ‘programme’ of sorts we didn’t have enough focus – and I had the feeling that sometimes our team wondered why we had wasted their time. That’s why we felt we had to be more proactive, and plan more rigorously (if I’m really honest, my husband is incredibly laid back and I, well I can still struggle with taking authority over the group in such an obvious way – but I’m learning to).

You may want to start (and keep doing this whenever you have an influx of new musicians) communicating your vision and values to your team. If you don’t have these take some time to prayerfully consider then write some that are specific to your team. You could always ask your team members for ideas in one worship team meeting… (If this isn’t something you have done before, and you’d like an example to look at do let us know and I can post up and explain our team’s worship guidelines, which includes our aims and values. It can actually be very productive to get each individual band to write their own vision – something they can work towards then update each year.)

3. Don’t feel that you need to spend hours writing material for a team building evening.

There are some great resources out there – I’ve already mentioned the Must Haves Devotional and the Worship Central course. I’d love to hear from you if you find another resource, or if you have tried something yourself that you think really works. Please post your comments below so that others can benefit from the ideas you’ve found useful (asking the advice of other worship pastors from churches you are in relationship with is another great way of finding ideas. This was something that I intentionally did when we first started out – with the experience behind them they could quickly say if something had worked or not in their setting, and it was great to feel a level of support from them too as they encouraged us to keep going).

4. Get into the Word.

We often emphasise worship and prayer in these kinds of meetings, but getting some biblical input is vital too. Why not start by looking at the way worship is portrayed in the Bible, and think about how we do things today and whether they are truly biblical or simply cultural? Get your team to really connect to, and wrestle with, some portions of scripture.

5. Write a psalm together.

This is something we have done in the welcome section of our life groups, but it is great fun to spend a little longer on it with your worship team. There is a depth of creativity within musicians that doesn’t always come out, so given the encouragement to write something from the heart can often reveal real beauty – and a talent for lyric writing!

6. Have a jam session.

Spend time trying out new songs and/or new ways of arranging things. This can give you the time and space that you don’t have week by week to keep things fresh. It could also be a great forum for trying out new musicians – and also the place where someone could bring a song they have written. (Although the latter may be better in a smaller group, with people who the songwriter respects and trusts, and who will be honest and encouraging with their feedback.)

I know there are many other things you can do in a worship team meeting – these are just the things we have tried out most recently. The next post focuses more on relationship matters…

Claire Musters is a freelance writer and editor. Two of her greatest passions are worship and seeing people reach their full potential. Claire is currently available for work – check out her website clairemusters.com for more information and details of how to contact her.

Photo credit www.bro-ken.net (you can hear the song they were working on in this photo here)

Hi Claire,
I am over the worship team at my church which i just recently just started the team back up.They had been down before i became a member.
I have been doing a 10 minute Bible devotion with them before we sing. I feel that we as a team should study the Word together and not just any but something to do with what we do. Do you have an scriptures or even anything that'll help me to explain it to them better?

Hi, Lindsay - I have to echo Marie's point (and I too am guessing you rehearse just before the Sunday meeting), but a bit more forcefully: 40 minutes is simply not enough to rehearse a group of musicians.
People who haven't been involved with presenting music often have no idea how much work it takes. It would be well worth sitting down with the congregational leadership - whatever form that takes - and thrashing out exactly what you all hope to accomplish with the music when the congregation gathers. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but nothing with that small a focus or investment could honestly be called a "ministry".
It may be that the singers/musicians need to be released from the obligation to attend other midweek church meetings so that they can do the job properly. Or it may be that one or more of them need to recognise that it just isn't central to their walk with God and step back from it. In extremis, it may be that you need to accept that musical quality is not relevant for the congregation whose meetings you attend; and that may entail some earnest seeking of the Holy Spirit regarding what fruit he's expecting of you at the moment. But, for whatever reason you only have 40 minutes a week, something surely has to give.

Great article Claire! Just for grins, here is our newly modified weekly rehearsal schedule:
4-5 JAM session for newbies
5:00-5:30 clean the building as a team!
5:30-6:00 dinner
6:00-6:30ish bible story and prayer time
6:30-7:30 worship and prayer time
7:30-8:30 music practice time (work through the songs in detail)
These aren't hard rules on times, but general guidelines. As you can see it's a full schedule and many of our older worship team members can't get there in time for the earlier parts, but some of the younger ones can be there for the whole thing, so we invite anyone who can to come to any parts they can make it to!
you can read more here if you care:
http://www.newsoundworship.com/new-worship-practice-schedule-with-explanation/

Hi Lindsay
Claire makes some very good points here. Just to add to that perspective in relation to our experience of running live training days.
When we spend a day working with a church's worship band, our normal approach is during the morning to take the singers out with a vocals coach and do some basic breathing, posture work and warm-ups before working with a song and harmonies.
Meanwhile the other musicians work through a song. We'll then bring them back together later on in the day.
If, as Claire suggests, you have someone available who can work separately with the singers then that's a real bonus. Maybe even without a leader, they could spend some of the downtime doing some vocal warm-up exercises together (as you probably know, we sell several CDs).
Back to the 40 mins per week (I'm assuming this is the time immediately before the service). You're going to struggle to do more than just run through your set list let alone learning anything new, work on a different arrangement, or push the boundaries a little. Perhaps you ought to try just once in a while having an additional practice time midweek?

Hi
Thanks for your question.
That is a really tough one - your rehearsal is so short! We do at least 11/2-2 hours per week, and also fit in a whole team meeting once every six weeks or so. Is there a possibility that you could extend your practises - at least sometimes? I do feel that we don't spend much time with our singers at the moment, because it is usually me plus the other main instrument player that sings. We spend more time focusing on what we are playing rather than what we sing unless we are learning a new song. I realise, however, with bands that have separate singers - possibly even a choir - there is a need to spend more time with them. One thing we did in a previous church was ask a guy who was very experienced in singing to take the singers away for a bit of a rehearsal while we learned a new song as a band (so we could talk through arrangements etc without boring them and they could focus on learning the melody, working out harmonies etc) then we came back together to go through it altogether. This was after a time of worship as a whole band, so that we ensured we weren't separate for most of the time. Perhaps that is something you could try?

Our team's rehearsal time is about 40 minutes per week. If I need to work with the band, I feel I am neglecting the singers and vice versa. Any suggestions for making the most of our 40 minutes for all?